Twain had it right...

First things first...you'll notice there is a watermark on this photo.  I've been finding some of my photos used without permission for a while now and recently have confirmed unauthorized use on a couple of commercial sites.  I'm not sure how it's happening since I have disabled the download link on my flickr page.  I have however stupidly put a lot of my images here on the blog in full resolution (color me LAZY)!  Some of those photos are licensed with Getty Images, so it kinda "frosts" me that someone is using them for free when they are actually for sale.  I'm very on the fence about this whole watermark issue tho'.  I mean, what does it say about me?  That I think I'm such hot stuff, I assume people want to steal my work?  NOT the message I want to communicate!  And of course, there's the extra time it takes to apply a watermark and the issue of saving yet another copy of that photo on my hard drive.  I also dislike watermarks that distract from the image.  But, if the watermark is too unobtrusive (as I've tried before), people can just crop it out.  So, all that said.....Any opinions on watermarks in general, and specifically on a watermark like this??  I honestly don't know what I'm going to do long term.  Maybe it's best to just not worry about what I can't control anyway.

That said, I think I've been going through a creative slump lately.  I check the flickr challenges every day, but usually can't motivate myself to "go for it".  It's partly a time issue...but I've been lacking inspiration.  I think maybe 365 consecutive days of trying to be creative may have run the well dry.  lol.  At any rate, I've been working on Hannah's annual memory photo book and was out shooting random things like bricks, rocks, etc. to use as backgrounds for some of the pages.  Bokeh shots work really well as backgrounds too, so I intentionally shot out of focus and into the light to grab some soft bokeh.  Oddly, out of everything I shot that day, I liked this shot best.  I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but sometimes I enjoy seeing form and color without any particular definition.  To complete the image I searched for "focus" quotes and found Mark Twain's words.  Aren't they perfect for how I've been feeling?  Must work at depending less on the eyes and more on the imagination!  I do think that's where the magic happens.